Enjoying the View
by Dakk Tribal
Summary: Rikku returns to Bikanel following the end of FFX-2 in order to start over. Now with the Gullwings disbanded, guess who comes back into her life? / Gippal x Rikku fluff


With the sun out in force, the Al Bhed on Bikanel Island continued their work despite the elements working against them. They had been working in the unforgiving wastelands of the islands since the beginning of Sin, digging for the ruins of their former home and taking back what they could, and they weren't going to change it any time soon.

Recently a new type of salvaging the wreckage of machina that was buried in the desert sands following the destruction of the Al Bhed settlement called Home. It was a crew of around thirty men and women managing the diggers, large cranes and drills that dug under the sand and hung around the coasts. That was where Rikku was working, and where she had been for the past six months.

Ever since the Gullwings disbanded.

Every time Rikku thought about her former teammates she was filled with a deep sadness. Even in the midst of helping out her Al Bhed friends she never felt more out of place until she realized how much she missed Yuna and the others. 'But…without Yuna and Paine, the Gullwings just weren't the same.' So…she left in search of other things to do.

["Hey, Rikku! Better hurry up or your old man will chew you out!"]

Rikku snapped out of her thoughts and went ahead with her work. Sending supplies to the various camps along the coast wasn't hard work but there were long stretches of waiting and Rikku wasn't one to sit down and wait. She had to keep moving otherwise she'd be asleep, and that was in no way to get the job done. ["Okay! Almost done!"]

The crane moved the last big container to the boat and Rikku put in the data needed on the data board before pushing the enter key. She was done for the day now. She turned to her colleague named Nabal, ["I'm heading for home. I'll see you later."]

He waved off the girl and she went along her merry way. Getting on her hover, Rikku rode along the beach that led to her makeshift home. Home was the nicest title she could give to it. All it was was the remains of an air ship that had crashed in the sand. It took Rikku a lot of convincing with her old man to keep him from scrapping the place. It had everything Rikku needed and she intended to keep it.

Even though she parked her hover near her home, she didn't go inside to the air conditioned airship. Instead, Rikku needed to do something else. Something she needed but had been unable to do for the past week.

Since the defeat of Vegnagun a little over six months ago, the Machine faction that was based in Djose Temple was doing decently, using the spare parts from the legendary weapon that Gippal somehow snuck out of the Farplane. That was until the Youth League and New Yevon gave up hostilities entirely and devoted themselves to demilitarizing their arsenals. Suddenly finding his weapon deals lacking, Gippal and the Machine faction instead helped with creating transport boats and ferries for the civilian population of Spira. Even small airships were being made, but because of all the work, Gippal more or less had no free time of his own to deal with. Today was quite an exception because he was able to sneak off to Bikanel without raising any eyebrows.

'_Always good to return home, even if it doesn't exist anymore,_' Gippal said, standing beside his hover near a stretch of beach. He had been on Bikanel for most of the day, having checked on his other friends in the digging camp before exploring the rest of the island just for kicks.

He got on his hover and went along the beach a bit further, not expecting to see anything of any importance, until he picked up something on the portable radar on the hover's dashboard. A singular blip that was directly ahead of him. Stopping atop a sand dune, Gippal pulled out the binoculars that came with the hover and scanned the area in front of him. There he saw another hover with a single person on it. An Al Bhed woman and she looked familiar.

Zooming in a bit further, Gippal got the zoom in close enough to see the woman's face. He knew who it was even with the headgear she wore, the goggles and the skin tight jump suit. "Ahhh…if it isn't Cid's baby girl…" he said with glee. Rikku was an old friend of his, though there were times he had thought she was more than just a friend to him no matter how vehemently she denied it. She always got flustered when he hinted at the possibility of them having a relationship. Anyway, the last time he had seen Rikku was shortly after she and Yuna had defeated Vegnagun. Six months later and she hadn't talked to him. Makes me feel special, he thought sarcastically.

"But…what is she doing out here?"

It wasn't until after Rikku took off her headgear and started to unzip the zipper on the back of the jumpsuit did Gippal sort of get the idea of what she was up to. "Oh boy…" he muttered as he watched the show unfold.

The warm air hitting her sweaty skin made Rikku sigh. When she unzipped herself all the way down before she pulled her arms out of the sleeves, then her legs came out next. She tossed the suit onto the seat of her hover and stretched her limbs out. She was dressed in a simple yellow two piece swimsuit, a chocobo yellow in color. Rikku felt much better being in this than in a suit in a desert, and she was going to relish it for awhile.

She decided to go to the water's edge, or at least into the ankle deep part of it and splash around. Sure it sounded silly but Rikku wasn't exactly mature either, so it was expected of her to enjoy her fun the way she knew how. Doing it alone wasn't fun however, and she really wished that Yuna and Paine were around to enjoy it too…

_'__But when you get the love of your life back you want to savor being with him, who could blame Yuna for retiring to Besaid?'_ Rikku sat down in the sand, thinking of how her life would be different if she ever found the right guy. Of course, at one time she thought she had found the so called right guy but…let's just say he was too full of himself, or so Rikku believed.

"Gippal was never the type to think about how I felt," Rikku said aloud, falling back and landing in the sand—

-Just in time to see Gippal looking down at he, with a smug grin on his face, "Hey, if it isn't Rikku. How you been?"

Rikku shrieked and sat straight up, immediately tossing sand in Gippal's face out of defense, which now seemed senseless but she was caught off guard by his sudden appearance and had panicked. Gippal cried out as his one eye was covered in warm sand. Luckily his other eye was covered by the patch he wore. ["What are you doing?!"]

Gippal tried to not rub his eye and instead answered Rikku by speaking in Al Bhed, ["Last I checked, this island wasn't private, so I can go where I want."]

Rikku put her arms on her hips, "Well this happens to be my property, my house is just down that way—"

Not sure if he heard her right, so he had to ask, "You own a house on the island?"

She pointed towards her house, the fallen airship partially buried in the beach just down the coast, "Yup, pops hasn't touched the place because I called dibs on it when we found it."

"You live there all alone?"

"Duh, otherwise I'd never get any peace and quiet," Rikku answered, brushing her legs off of the sand stuck to her skin. She looked out at the water and she heard a distinct sound of zippers being unzipped and she immediately turned to see Gippal looking different from before. This was because in the few minutes he had been talking with Rikku he had shed most of his clothes and was now down to knee length shorts and nothing else. No shirt either, and Rikku suddenly turned around, hoping he didn't see the red forming in her cheeks.

Gippal wasn't worried about her though, he had known Rikku for roughly two years, and she was always fun to be around, even if the fun was at her expense.

The Al Bhed man went and asked if she was alright anyway. Rikku quickly answered an emphatic 'Yes!' and went on walking towards her house. Gippal quickly followed, walking beside her, "Don't you think you'll get lonely?"

Rikku scoffed at him, "You think I need a man around to help me? I'm a big girl you know."

This time it was Gippal who voiced his disagreement, "Like a few seconds ago when you saw me? You probably squealed with delight." He noticed she had stopped and the fact that he had seen her face before hit her pretty good. Rikku was a terrible liar anyway, so if she said no Gippal knew she had lied.

Still, Rikku tried to hide her flustered state, "Yeah right…me squealing over you?" She then made the mistake of looking in his direction and that was a bad move. This time she did squeal for real at his chest being lean and appearing smooth, he was well muscled and just looking at him made Rikku feel strange.

Sadly for her, Gippal noticed, "You really need a boyfriend, Rikku."

"I already tried that and it failed, remember?" Rikku covered her mouth too late, what she said had come out.

Gippal had heard it too, finally glad that she had admitted to what he had believed for nearly three years. "I was your first boyfriend. And if I remember correctly, you were the one who dumped me."

Rikku covered her ears, "Not listening to you!"

Gippal sighed and saw that she started to walk faster, and so he ran up behind her, grabbing her by one of her wrists, "Trying to run away again?"

"I never ran away, I just…wasn't ready for it yet, I had other problems to deal with first you know," Rikku said, pulling her wrist from his grip and once again trying to walk away.

Gippal shook his head at her insistence to get away from him before reaching for her again. This time he grabbed her by the back of the swimsuit bottoms she wore and pretty much yanked her back to him. She again shrieked and Gippal put his arms around her waist, stopping her from turning and retaliating against him.

Holding her tightly against him, Rikku squirmed, "Gippal let me go!"

"Oh shut up and listen to me," he simply said. He sometimes got tired of Rikku trying to get out of predicaments in which she was losing. "Haven't you ever wanted to start over? Try the whole relationship again from scratch?"

Rikku stopped moving, her hands going to his, "You think it would be any different? I don't know."

Knowing that she told the truth this time, Gippal couldn't help but agree with her. Sure, they could try and do their relationship over, but what if Rikku wasn't comfortable with it like she had been before? The last thing Gippal wanted was to feel responsible for that like he had been the last time. He still blamed himself for that, even if it was only half his fault. "Well, we won't know until we try, right?"

Rikku smiled lightly, "I'll think about it. Just don't push me, alright?"

His mind agreed with her, his hands had a mind of their own as they went right to Rikku's slender hips, and as they got a good feel there, Rikku slapped both his hands and he let her go. "Ow…"

Rikku stepped away from Gippal, "Look but not touch, that's the first thing you need to know about me. Try not to grope me."

Gippal only had one word for that, "Boring." Then he grabbed Rikku's arm pulled her to him once again, only this time he lifted her up and over his shoulder. His left hand had a firm grip on her thighs while she was squirming and hitting his back with her fists.

["Gippal you jerk, put me down!"]

He ignored her and started walking towards the water, going to where it was ankle high before promptly dropping the screaming Rikku butt first into the water. She madly splashed the water and then threw some into the grinning Gippal's face. "That was mean you…you…meanie!"

Gippal chuckled, "You were always good for a laugh Rikku. That's one of the things I love about you."

Rikku stopped and truth be told she felt touched by what he had just said. This unexpected sentence made Rikku forget about her anger towards him for a bit. Until she noticed that he started walking away, then she felt the need to chase after him and beat him into the sand.


End file.
